30 November 2004

Not again!!! There are two kinds of JBoss fanatics exists in the Java development community. Those who develop mainly in EJBs for about 3-5 users with no Machine-to-Machine, Application-to-Application interface just a damn glorified non-critical client/server application pretending to be an MVC-ish, GoF-compliant. Another one is a newbie who was lured that the way to J2EE bliss is thru JBoss.

How did I say that? Our own JBoss deployment whose primary purpose is to be a JMS Provider but can't deliver its promises. It has been struck by many illnesses, some are common and some are suprisingly strange. It's understandable that this is some sort of a highway robbery so we have to sign up for the premium level tech support, but guess what? We have it! Not that I recommended it, in fact that monster has been chosen before I got on board. Personally, I should have taken SonicMQ or FioranoMQ.

Speaking of the J2EE bliss, ironically, can be found in the tools and technologies that are not even part of J2EE! Some cool examples are Jini and JavaSpaces. These tools should be pushed more to the limelight because of its practicality and I believe their time has come. I'll be posting some examples here soon.

27 November 2004

Thinlet is a lighweight UI toolkit written Java, it's not a subset of Swing. Developing with Thinlet is a different ball game it's nowhere similar with Swing or SWT. It totally separates the UI from the business logic, one of the few native UI toolkit that takes MVC in its purest form. Good thing about thinlet is the footprint is very small and more responsive than Swing or SWT. Since it can run on Windows CE, it's a good toolkit for developing PocketPC applications.

26 November 2004

To GUI! I mean the native GUI. Admit it, without GUI only "you" will use your product. Aside from being an eye candy and providing relative ease-of-use, GUI is important. Designed properly, it reduces "normal users" stress, it abstracts complexity of a commandline operation. For the frontend developer, it's an extraordinary skill to build and to have an "eye" for a truly usable GUI.

SWT or Swing?

SWT, why? SWT adapts naturally to the host UI in whatever OS it is being run although there are some exceptions as of now. Since it's native, it's faster than Swing by any means. Easy to code? No, SWT is nowhere near easy and SWT article writers should not deceive readers into thinking it's easy because they may end up frustrated and might switch to the other side.

UI Design Guidelines

Different vendors has different UI design guidelines, I would suggest to adapt what you might fit to your application needs. As of this writing, I feel that IBM's Ease of Use - Design would fit to my need so that's what I am trying to learn right now.

25 November 2004

I only knew little about security standards, but shouldn't security solutions be straightforward? In any aspect of life such as safeguarding your house, your assets, and your love ones. There's always a natural instinct of common sense on how to secure these things. Same way goes to securing your data against crackers(script kiddies), vandalizers, worms and viruses. This one application JMODEM can address so well.

In the image above, how do you think a worm or a virus or crackers can get into the system? One way, by being physically in the server room themselves!! Which the JMODEM protocol can no longer control.

After finishing my SMS application with RS232 Java Comm API, I am wondering where to put it into some extraordinary use. This morning while watching TV and monitoring the transportation strike calling for the deregulation of oil prices, it struck me once again that last year or couple of years back there's a suggestion from a certain mailing list on how to bring the big 3(Shell, Petron, Caltex) players here to its knees, I will not consider new players because only these 3 has an effective market influence and huge refineries and depots in Pandacan :).

Here's how the suggestion said as far as I can remember, I want to dub it "Precision Oil Boycott". This kind of boycott is different and later on I will translate it in Filipino once I find the accurate Filipino word for "precision" hehehe.

It's undeniable that we need fuel everyday and those big 3 knows it so they can always capitalize on this need to dictate the shape of the local market. Although they show the public that they are competing but behind the curtains is obvious monopoly. So boycotting them altogether won't work because we need fuel to cook our food and drive our cars. So how are going to bring this three-headed dragon to its knees? First we choose which one of the big 3 are we going to boycott for 3 months and get our supply of fuel from other two. Let's take for example Shell, If Shell got no nationwide sale for 3 months they're stock will plummet! Caltex will grow and so is Petron but their revenues can't withstand the wrath of the next boycott because these growth are not sustainable. So once Shell is down it will negotiate according to the dictates of the consumer, then we'll take on Caltex then Petron. Believe me, in one year time we will have a better priced oil in the local market.

Now, I have to expound this in Filipino so that local transport organizations will know how to fight the smart way without getting their families hungry. Since the Philippines is the SMS capital in the world, this is the best channel to spread the message and vote whose head will roll first.

24 November 2004

If people whose heads stucked down in their asses get together to discuss something, what do you get? Of course loads of crap.

Miliblogs, short for military blogs. Written by soldiers mostly from the frontlines, with few pretending to be one. Some of these guys as of this writing are being shot at with 7.62s, RPGs, mortars, rocks, tin cans, shoes, slippers, shrapnels from IEDs and roadside bombs but they'll just going to shrug it off, it's a cakewalk. The worst way to be shot at with is with Kevin Sites' camera with one of them shooting an unarmed, wounded, non-hostile combatant inside a mosque. One helluva of Hollywood material. Right or wrong, not a good frame to stand in. Anyway, I found some of these milibloggers' commenters really stupid and funny. Because of their lopsided and close-minded comments discussions becomes scary and discrimanatory. These milibloggers got some good reasons to be writing their experiences even probably with their commanders' disapproval. There's even a blog whose been trying hard to put more fuel to heat up an issue in which the whole world doesn't really care about. The fun part is the basis of his issues came from the entities whose heads are also stucked in their behinds. So guess what we got? CRAP! It's amazing that these milibloggers get thousands of readers everyday compared to other topics such as science and technology, business practices, and other insightful blogs where one can really learn a lot. Scary sometimes, that these people thinks that the only world that exists is the world around them.

Imagine what these bigots think about the rest of the world? About us.

22 November 2004

I think the battle cry of commercial software companies or Independent Software Vendors(ISVs) should be "Make More Money, Stop Software Piracy!". It's really about time to reshape the battlefield on how software piracy will be fought. Software companies should provide more ways in doling out incentives to those who legally use their products instead of funding the rewards pool of the BSA Gestapo for the whistle-blowers who has done nothing innovative in the advancement of our local software development industry. Most of the piracy happens within a software development outfit, developers that uses cracked tools to get things done or they thought is cool to use. This hurts the commercial software vendors big time because cracked tools can spread rapidly. And because of small budgets, some are forced to used the cracked ones so before unleashing the BSA Storm Troopers to their doors. Think some cost saving strategies that will benefit the vendor and developer. And here, nothing beats CASH.

Case in point, Joe Developer. Joe will be making an inventory application for Acme Rocket Boots company. Joe, prefers writing the application in Java and his client prefers Oracle as database. So Joe prepared a budget proposal for Acme Rocket Boots that includes cost of licenses for Oracle X(enter your version here) Enterprise Edition. In short, Acme Rocket Boots accepted the proposal and made an initial payment to Joe. Since the development will not be performed in-house, Joe is aware of the risks involved in a software project and the payment for Oracle licenses are not covered from the initial payment made to him. Joe started the project using Oracle X Personal Edition because it is free for development purposes only, therefore it is perfectly legal to use it at this stage. Upon completion of the application, Acme Rocket Boots tested and confirms that it works according to the specification so they are ready to pay the balance and deploy the application. At this point, Joe can make extra money from the Oracle X Enterprise Edition License by negotiating a deal with an authorized Oracle account executive to get commission(c'mon shitheads developers are your most effective middlemen). This is not corruption, every developer that endorses an ISV product should get incentive from doing so or else most of them can crack the app and ISV loses money, do the math.

Big software companies must give incentive to developers who uses their products and endorses it to their project managers, IT Heads, CIOs and other decision makers, forget about the discounts, freebies and all sorts of non-cash compromise, in this part of the globe showing the money is unbeatable. ISV's marketing people can't just influence the top once the developers evaluate their apps and says its full of crap. This is a win-win proposition.

21 November 2004

Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's irritating when a tech recruiter rang you up without fully reading your profile. Here's my own few tips to avoid time-wasters:

Send your CV in pdf format, if they replied that they can't read it and ask you to have it it resend in Word Doc, forget it. Chances are , even if you get the job you're not going to be happy with it anyway(In the loooong run...). First why is it important that you should send your CV in pdf instead of Word Doc? Because only the original creator can edit the original file, you don't want your Word Doc CV dangling around the Net to be used by undesirables didn't you?

Just like the above, if the recruiter says they are an open source company but can't read your CV using an OpenOffice Writer *.sxw format. FORGET IT! A company will scrutinize you, so you must insidiously scrutinize them first by putting some baits.

If you're asking salary is above they're expecting and you honestly feel you deserve it, the negotiation should be short if they can afford it. But if they negotiate lower and promise to you that what you're asking will be given in a matter of time or in exchange of a "rewarding career" is offered or be in the forefront of "promotion" in case of expansion. Nicely, conclude the interview and walk away.

Your recruiter will reaffirm your date of availability if you indicated it and those who understands their business will respect it and will not negotiate against it.

Written exams are ok, but it barely proves anything of worth.

These tips will only payoff to candidates that are not desperate no matter what his/her current situation is in getting a job. If they are, they can take any shit because of shallow principles and narrow integrity. I believe Tech workers especially developers deserves better.

19 November 2004

Just in case the next Slackware's iteration bangs up. I think I have to move to Solaris 9 for x86 or Gentoo. But I hope the next Slackware Keeper can do a good job maintaining it. I am going to miss Dropline Gnome once I switched.

18 November 2004

Also known as the Java Game Profile. The last time I looked at this spec was sometime in May or June 2003 and I thought this is killer spec! But when I revisited it this morning, this is what I've seen:

W I T H D R A W N

What?!? WTF?!?

Fortunately, there is valid reason for its withdrawal and I quote here:

"Withdrawn 2003.07.09. The Spec Lead has chosen to withdraw this JSR. It was determined that the needs of games developers were best served by moving to a pure open source model for game client technologies. This changes in strategy will allow the broadest participation by the game development community, and will focus the energies of the community on timely solutions that address a rapidly changing technology landscape. The Spec Lead wishes to thank the Java Community and the Game Developers who supported and showed interest in this effort."

That's it! Open Source Rules! With hardware capabilities keeps on getting better every year and the JVM is compiling at par or better against C++ as of J2SDK 1.4.2, why suffer the dev stress of C++? Isn't time to implement Carmack's Reverse in Java?

17 November 2004

While typing my full name in Google to find out what has been going on in my entire Net life, I stumble on one of Rick Ross's post in his JavaLobby that pertains about my blog on JavaDocs and I found it quite flattering. Read on

Ha! While I still don't have that data cable for Nokia 6610 or the Sony Ericsson DSR-11. I will have to build the basic SMS Message Monitor with Sender in SWT to properly bolt together all the core modules that is necessary to initialize the Java Serial Comm API helper classes that will work in the real world and just be happy with the Nokia 32 GSM modem that I am testing on for now so that I won't be punching arguments in the command line everytime I start the thingy.

Now the core class that handles the serial communication must have an exposed (public) method that can handle callbacks from any business modules that implements the respective callback interface. Callback implementations can have suitable operations such as querying a database, writing or reading to a file and sending back the response to the requesting Mobile Equipment. In fact the possibilities are almost endless, only your imagination can stop you. Like for example, pizza deliveries. Some pizza deliveries cannot afford to register a shortcode in a telco if it the telco deemed it can't generate a good amount of traffic. The SMS Message Monitor can help boost their sales by handling SMS requests on their own.

Aha! This is what self-proclaimed-techie product managers in the Search Engine Marketing(SEM) sector is buzzing about all this time. I thought while looking at their powerpoint slides and all those binary tree diagrams appearing is another new breed of Multi-Level Marketing(MLM) with a more insidious scam ever formulated for the stupid public.

But peering closely to what Contextual Inventory is. I found some interesting notes about it. Contextual Inventory helps match user interests to the ads being served through contextual relevance. Algorithms used for such activities are usually well-guarded secrets but definitely discoverable. If you think you have one or brewing an idea of having a killer contextual search algorithm, you can play with it using Nutch. And the rest of course is an exercise for the reader.

14 November 2004

Right before the admittance of this hoax. I argued that this story is too sad too be true sometime in pinoyjug-chat I hope nobody deletes that message. And I knew this was coming. It's not that I have talent for clairvoyance, it just a matter of common sense. I guess this is exactly my reaction when I read that mail:

"Dang, how many more emails of this kind are we going to exchange over
the net so that we can stand up and deliver? The whole story is too
sad to be true that the media of all entities failed to notice..."

I will not blame Faye's mom for this. I would like to blame the very "technical people" (I think that includes my wife) for dessiminating that "sad story". I blame them because I don't know how they read and tried to understand between the lines of those lies before they spread it out in every email addresses they could! Now if some coders read this way I don't know what kind of programs they can come up with.

Let's take it point by point as far I can analyze the story:

"They saw this challenge as a rare opportunity offered to Faye and her country, considering that only two Asian countries qualified - Japanand the Philippines. Unfortunately, our government had other priorities."

What other priorities our government has? Many yes, but I doubt this will fail to get any of their attention.

"...All turned them down except for one who was willing to help, on condition that Faye should give public credit to the senator for supporting her even int the earlier competitions she joined. Out of integrity, the mother could not accede to this arrangement. Thus no outside
help was found..."

For what will the senator gain out of this? Puyat brothers will still gain from Bata's achievements without sidelining the country.

"No kababayan welcomed them in Australiaexcept for a kind Filipina they met
in the plane who assisted them. As they were checking in at a hotel, the
"kind" Filipina who volunteered to help them disappeared taking with her
Faye's and her mother's bags, passports, and plane tickets. At that point,
they literally had nothing left except for the few pieces of clothes and
their faith in God. They had to sell the extra clothes left to be able to
buy food."

A kind Filipina on the way to Australia to rob? What's this? A planned heist? they must be filthy
rich. It can be done yes, but it's preposterous.

"In need once again, they sought help from some of the Filipino officials in
Australiabut to no avail. Oddly, the Filipino officials there were too busy
with other priorities, not minding to help a young girl and a mother who
had no other desire but to bring honor to our country."

I knew it! They were filthy rich and they have very expensive clothes to wear. In need once again, when was the last time they were not?

"Given a budget for only a one night stay at the hotel, mother and daughter
had to check out the following day. Leaving their luggage on deposit and
without money for transportation fare, they decided to walk two kilometers
to the competition venue on their native Filipino costumes.

If walking a two kilometer distance was bad enough, how much more would be
walking the distance on their native costume along the highways of
Australia!"

Aren't you aware of this joke? 2kms is a long walk believe or not the RP Embassy has two or more cars out there good enough for 2 kms and I don't think it's a misplaced priority. Highways of Australia, I am not sure if this is an allegory or literal hehehe.

"With only the three-piece costume they had on, Faye and her mom were even
more surprised when the organizing committee awarded their booth as "The
Most Creative" booth"

I don't want to imagine what Faye's mom did, but if there's an award for "Most Exotic" they might have that too. You reader, what else can you do with at 3-piece costume?

"In the early part of the competition, Japan, Braziland Spainwere
eliminated. As the only Asian country left to compete against six Western
nations, the Philippineswas cheered on by Japan. Faye was encouraged by her
Japanese cheering squad, but in her heart, how she wished that she had her
own countrymen to cheer her on."

Her mom was also a heart reader mind you.

"When Faye finally won first place and Philippinesnational anthem was being
played, she prayed silently thanking God for making her a Filipina. Despite
all the painful experiences she had with her country, her priorities did
not waver. A Japanes diplomat was the one who helped Faye and her mom to
secure temporary pass so they could return to the Philippines. The money
they won was just enough for their fare back home and their temporary
passport. When Faye was relating this story before a crowd, she said, " Let
us love our nation, for nobody else will."

Wait a second, a temporary pass to where? To the Philippines? By a Japanese Diplomat? By whose authority? Kofi Anan? In other country, this kind of statement is seditious and treacherous and is punishable by death(definitely not the humane way). I am still lucky I live in the Philippines.

"Faye's story reminds us all to look within ourselves. This eleven year old
girl could have complained to the media, but she did not. She went out of
her own small way to bring greatness to this land."

Hell sure is, because there is really nothing to complain.

I still want to tell my fellow countrymen that I am proud to be here in the Philippines even if most jobs here are a joke, we're not broke. :))

13 November 2004

Ok, Java Rocks! for the nth time hehehehe. Thanks for the automated memory management. After doing C programming at an enterprise level it's like fighting without body armor and kevlar helmet in the middle of some Iraqi Badlands.

I feel well rested after rolling out our C application overnight and so far everything is stable. And I have been walking around malls looking for a data cable that will fit on a Nokia 6610 because that's what I need to complete my test on my SIM Navigator using Java Serial Comm API and can't find any!

Then a Singaporean recruiter rang me up while I am in the middle of the road, I can't say anything so I have to cut the conversation and have a talk at a later time. There's a lot of business whizzing around here, I am wondering how these guys got to cut some deals. Maybe we can do that too. But I really have my eye on finishing the SIM navigator for now. And of course the PGSuite's release.

Lastly, some people wants observer status on my open source SS7 for Java implementation. So, I guess this will going to breakthrough.

Corporate webs are like cotton candies, they have to be tasty and colorful hehehehe. Anyway, I think I have found a tool that will help me build portlets with Sun Java System Application Server. And it's called LifeRay. Liferay was built around Session EJBs (yeeeeccchh!). But that is not necessary for me, my requirements for a portlet reference implementation are no Maven lock-in, must support different application servers seamlessly and LifeRay qualified on that regardless if it's using a Session EJB I am not going to take advantage of that anyway.

09 November 2004

I can't believe I am discussing this over blog. First, I despise the title "Web Developer" because I am not. Ironically, I am working on one and it is of a robust kind. I guess local corporations are beginning to look at portals quite seriously this recent days. Unexplained I.T. spending for new hardware has driven management for a more detailed and drilled-down business intelligence when it comes to I.T. operational investments. CPU utilizations, memory usage and disk capacities and number of processes running in some servers has been formally reported in order to justify another major I.T. spending.

So now, portals and manageability becomes an unlikely combination. I am only interested in portals and portlets because this is an inevitable roadmap for unified monitoring and control within a corporate I.T. setup. Specifically, It's about JSR-168 and the JMX API. Portal is basically an aggregator for several portlets. Portlets may consist of several business units within an enterprise, it can be an accounting portlet, human resource portlet, distribution portlet, shop-floor-control portlet and so forth. These portlets are aggregated to a portal in order to have unified look-and-feel and a single-sign on security as well.

Manageability, is one aspect of a portlet that provides command and control over a particular business process, say, start/stop an operation. JMX may be too complicated for this and too "J2EE-ish" but it addresses the management aspect of every distributed business process and the question still remain on how JMX will be used if a system to be monitored is outside of a J2EE container? For example a process that is written in C or C++?

07 November 2004

Actually, I don't know what title I am going to use for this entry. Generally, it pertains to Java-based Serial Communications API on a GSM modem. The GSM 7.07 specifications supports the use of AT commands for controlling Mobile Equipment's(ME) or in other words your cellular phone's keypads with "AT+CKPD" command. Of course, this command will not work on a GSM Modem like Nokia 30 or 32. Why? because it doesn't have any keypads! It's just a plain GSM Modem. Why would I need to control a keypad? First, I need to navigate a Smart SIM wallet and send credits (E-Load, not PasaLoad) using my PC to another ME and save its number to file or database for end-of-day sales reporting. Now, I may not need a GSM Modem at all to launch this application! The caveat is, each model has different key mappings so get ready for some OOP patterns to be used that supports each phone model.

Simple replicable idea, but don't even think about it. It's already BSD'd, I will only make money suing you while copying and redistributing this in your own name.

05 November 2004

01 November 2004

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, officially called Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act. I believe this Act has something to do with the Enron Scandal. And involves changes on how financial and corporate reporting is conducted. It provides rules for the retention of document of all types, alteration or deletion are awarded with 10 to 20 years imprisonment and sequestration of ill-gotten gains. Pretty serious piece of legislation.

The SEC requires publicly traded companies with market cap of $75 Million and over must meet major compliance by November 15 and smaller market cap companies have until July 15 of 2005 to comply. Quite a pressure. The implementation of this new and improved record management will fall heavily on I.T. In order to achieve compliance, additional investments in storage devices, specialized software, new types of media, and enhanced records management controls will be necessary. In other words, it sounds crazy to outsource this daunting task halfway across the globe. Chances are, the more astute companies will bring back H1-B I.T. workers instead of offshore outsourcing.

This act will make programmers, sysads and the likes more indispensable in the eye of the management. So how can a Filipino Java Developer gear up for the next big rush since Y2K? First thing, it is unavoidable that specialized software and record management controls will be developed for this purpose and as of now there isn't any that will address the Sarbanes-Oxley directives so as of now the playing field is still "level".

However, there are two competitors that we need to beat in this game; India and defeatism. The latter is just an crab email away to waste us. :)

A bit off-topic, but for the benefit of those who are wondering what's title of the musical score of that Bailey's Zero Gravity club tv ad. It's "Les Fleur" by 4Hero. Now bring up your Kazaa or Limewire or whatever you have. Enjoy.